Yes! String-quartetified Muse at a Yale dinner party! That is the very shit about which I am talking! Gossip Girl, stop playing crazy and go for it because that is the best musical choice ever explored on this musically perfectified show. Anyway, going in order of awesomeness is hard this week because all three storylines are pretty great, to the point where if Life hadn't this week guest-starred both Marguerite Moreau and Todd Stashwick, my two biggest TV crushes ever, it would have no competition at all for the best, best thing.
However, any storyline that involves both Rufus and Vanessa is automatically at the bottom of the applications file, so: Jenny and Vanessa team up to get Rufus to reconsider Jenny's insane dropout plan that will obviously be leading straight to cokewhoredom, but he reconsiders after about six people -- including Eleanor and hot-as-hell Lily -- explain to him that his life is useless, but Jenny's might not be if he lets her drop out of school at fifteen and become a cokewhore.
Meanwhile, Jenny is totally trying to get Lily to cheat on Bart with her Dad, because she has fucked up ideas about marriage, because her parents are Rufus and Alison Humphrey: the people who produced a tiny Dan Humphrey and didn't drown him immediately on seeing what a little asshole he obviously was.
Oh! And Eric has a new boyfriend: one who doesn't walk dogs. Total burn on Jenny!
Speaking of, Dan and Nate and Chuck get all kinds of weird and gay on each other, and it is awesome. Nate tells the Yalies he's Dan so that they won't kill him because the Captain ruined our economy, but the real Dan shows up after Nate meets some Canadian-looking girl whose mother was in the Navy (?), and he gets totally closed-mouth chaste embrace-blocked. , Chuck -- who's only at Yale so he can have an orgy with the Skull & Bones dudes -- sends the studs to tie Dan to a statue in his boxer shorts using oddly thorough knots. Nate throws a random punch at the guys to protect Dan's honor, runs to his rescue, and then takes his time with the untying. Cannot toss blame, as Dan should really log more boxer time to be honest, and then English TA Overbite Eyeball girl shows up again, totally blowing the mood.
Later everybody apologizes or something, it's boring and there is a lot of cheekbone action and everybody's got these bizarre gigantic eyebrows, but then when Nate finds out that Chuck sold out Dan's sweet ass to protect him, he totally dumps Chuck. Like, Chuck goes "We'll talk about this in the car" and Nate sniffs, like miffed wives everywhere, that he's taking the train. But it's only because Nate doesn't know that Dan and Chuck got so intimate in the jailhouse and now Chuck must destroy Dan lest anybody find out his terrible secret. And for once, I didn't even use rhetorical tricks or anything to try and make any of that sound gayer. It was just that gay. Gayer than rhetoric can create.
Additionally, the orgy with the Skull & Bones hotties? Totally a setup so that the multiple sets of foreign prostitute triplets he hired to rub up on them -- yes sir -- could take scandalous pictures of them with their LIPSTICK CAMERAS and thus put the entire underclass at Yale under Chuck's evil thumb. I also did not make any of that up even though it seems like I did. And I'm not saying I wouldn't, because I totally would? I'm just not awesome enough to come up with that.
But oh, Serena and Blair. So first Serena gets a handwritten invite to Yale, but decides to stick with Brown because it would literally kill Blair if she even went on campus. Then Blair gets cocky and tells her to enjoy being a freshman vegetarian lesbian at Brown, where stupid people go, so Serena changes her plans and totally charms the Dean. Blair responds by choking so hardcore she actually awkwardly pecks the dude on the cheek as she's leaving.
But then Blair steals her way back in to the super-secret dinner party -- where the aforementioned string tribute to "Time Is Running Out" is making everything perfectly perfect -- using some rare kitty-cat figurines that kind of make sense in context, but Chuck sells her secret "Famous Person Dinner Party" answer to Serena, who refuses to use it until... Blair does something else horrible, whatever, maybe it's so horrible I blocked it out, but so then at the party Blair exchanges the stolen answer (George Sand) for the name of the guy Serena KILLED! This is maybe the worst thing girlfriend has ever done, and it causes Serena to almost die, but Blair is not done! Before you know it, she explains that Yale's only interested in Serena as a Page Six PR stunt because she is a vapid whore, and then throws a purse at her head.
After the ensuing -- and effing brilliant, like slo mo-worthy -- catfight Serena tells her to never talk to her again, and it's so sad. But THEN the morning, they totally make up and it is AWESOME, and they find out that they were both right: Blair's too neurotic to get into Yale and Serena's only getting in because she's a celebrity. Serena, of course, is like "Lalala, I like bubblegum" at this revelation, and stumbles over a magic gnome that grants wishes on the way to her limo, while Blair silently plans all the things she's going to binge and purge later, but at least the tension's over for now. What a delightful episode! week: Vanessa Abrams as Annette " Madame de Tourvel" Hargrove. I'm freakin' dyin' over here with this long-ass recaplet already, but come on: called for. Two weeks is fourteen days too long. See you in XOXO!
Dean Berube, in classic Enry Iggins garb, comes around the couch on Blair, in full Eliza Doolittle garb, telling her to try again. "The Rhine ... in Spine... Stays mainly in the... pline?" He sighs, and she swears she's 4.0 inside, no matter how silly her flower-selling Mary Poppins outfit looks. Of course, the second she starts to get it, Serena enters, trilling her R's deliriously and dressed like she's going to the races. ("...She come to so sudden she bit the bowl right off the spoon! Now what call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? And what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it! And what I say is: them as pinched it, done her in." Best speech ever.) "The rrrrrrain in Spain stays mainly in the plain," Serena says, eyes closed, softly breathing with one hand in the air. Looking a total ass, awesomely; Enry Iggins shouts, "By George, I think she's got it!" And when B hopes, as she so often does, that he's talking about her, he clarifies: "No. She does." The Dean kisses Serena's hand, she laughs insanely, and B screeches all Cockney, waking herself up.
Blair rolls around in bed, pulling off her sleepmask and trying to identify and dismiss her distressing dream. "Rise and shine, early birds! Gossip Girl here. We all have dreams: some good, some bad, some fun and Freudian!" Dorota enters with a tray and wishes her a good morning. "...And some are the dreams we've had our whole lives." Blair excitedly narrates her life to faithful Dorota: "Can you believe that in just three short hours, I'll be stepping through the gates of Yale?" Dorota remembers how Blair slept in Harold's old Yale sweatshirt every night, until it fell apart. B swears she'll get a new one, right after the Dean of Admissions' private reception. "Most candidates think it's an urban legend, but Daddy was invited when he visited."
Dorota urges her to eat the breakfast Eleanor ordered B eat before leaving for work. "Some kombucha, Miss Blair?" Gross. I would rather drink grapefruit juice than be confronted with kombucha that early in the morning. It smells like a foot! Like a foot threw up! Mother Nature's foot sweat! Blair's skin is so lovely: "Since the Dean handpicks the guests right after their interviews, I'm a shoo-in. If there's one thing I know, it's that I give good interview. I could make Larry King cry," she says, popping like one raisin in her mouth. Dorota is overcome by affection unbefitting her position, and sits down on the bed to tell Blair how proud she is. Blair powers through this awkward moment and says she's ready to be among her people, surrounded by Yalies more like her and less like... Dorota shows her the paper: Page Six, all about Serena Serena Serena again. "...Her."
Meanwhile, Serena's reading her own Page Six adventures while Lily gets ready for the day. "You excited? Me at your alma mater?" Lily is very much so, but wonders if that's definitive re: Serena's disinterest in touring Yale, and the private invite to do so. "Brown's always been my plan, just like it was for you." Not that Lily didn't love it, but she would have been pleased as punch to get a Yale invitation. "Handwritten, Serena. In cursive." (As opposed to the cartoonish bubble-script with hearts on the i's so typically preferred by men of letters? Besides me, I mean.) "Yale is for overachieving bookworms and preppies: the Blairs of the world. Even though the two of us aren't exactly on speaking terms, there's no way I would step on that particular landmine."
(A word that comes back in a later act, and tells us here that Serena would like nothing better than to visit Yale, because she knows her mother is right, but rules it out without thinking twice, because she knows how she affects Blair just by existing. So she's already going back on the whole Being Her Own Windkeeper promises from last week, because it's a lot easier to make definitive, overall rules and stick by them if they're only theoretical, and if she learned anything from the Year of Dan it should have been that letting other people manipulate you out of their own neurotic need is easy to decry but really, really hard to stop doing; it's a fact of life that touches all the other facts of life.)
Dorota can't believe B's still not talking to Queen S, but B's staunch. "Not a word in a week. Though I can't seem to escape her. Ever since my mother's show, Manhattan has turned into Serena-ville." A fact of life that touches all other facts of life: even Dorota's impressed by the media blitz. "I heard Marc Jacobs named a purse after her!" She laughs and B stares until her smile falls. "Well. I simply don't understand the fascination. Fortunately, Yale is out of her reach," she snots, tossing the paper to the floor.
I think I'm drowning
Asphyxiated
I want to break this spell that you've created
"It's okay, Serena," says Lily. "You don't have to hide the photo. I've seen it." In the foreground is Serena, with a lovely lovely woman laughing behind her in profile, nearly unrecognizable unless you -- like the rest of us -- spend an inordinate amount of time staring at Kelly Rutherford's gorgeous face. "I'm sorry they called you my unidentified friend," Serena moans, and Lily laughs. "Well, I guess it's better than mother."
(Here I would predict some bumps in the road w/r/t Serena's celebutante status and Lily's newfound loneliness. The show rams it home several times throughout the episode: Blair and Serena spend the whole time invading each other's shit while even Lily's feeling pale to Full Force Serena, trying on her dresses and bumping around the house all lonely. What's the good of learning to cope with the CeCe world of press releases and society pages if nobody's paying attention? What's the point of being wicked hot if you're completely a mother, deserted by your three children and blackmailed in some unknown way by your magnate husband? The grossness of Eleanor v. Blair took up like the entire Thanksgiving recap, but I mean, it's Lily. She's perfect. She's been content to support Serena's It Girl status, joining ranks with Eleanor last week to get her ass to Bryant Park. Yet we see the same things falling into place, and it starts here: Yale never asked Lily, in handwritten cursive, to do a damn thing.)
Lily unwraps her dress for the Fall Dinner at the Frick from Eleanor, but there are two. Why would there be two? Serena makes that "Uh oh, I'm perfect" face and shows Lily the tag on the "edgier" dress: it's for her. "Oh. This must be mine..." It's a flowery summer dress, seemingly 1996 in cut and in a print composed of Rutherford's best colors: pale lavender and louder washed scarlets. It would have been perfect, if she hadn't seen the black one first; now they just shrug at each other. "It is a really nice color, though..."
DUMBO. Dan's running around queering out about the color and stock and font and whatever of his Yale application, and Rufus cares not a whit, even though Dan says the word "ecru" so many times, in so many ways, I would be worried he was having a gay-related stroke. Rufus, out of complete ignorance, tells him to mellow out and calls him the perfect Yale candidate. "Maybe, but I can't help thinking that Yale is for Presidents, not Humphreys." Oh, Lonelyboy. Second only to W in terms of complete inability to deal. Points for introspection, though. "As the man who cursed you with the Humphrey moniker," Rufus declaims, he must now give a speech. Dan protests that he didn't use the word "cursed," much as we're all thinking it, but the speech cannot be denied -- that's part of the curse.
"Daniel, my son, you have near perfect grades, excellent SATs, more talent than money could ever buy... If that's not enough, then there's something wrong with Yale, not you." And thus, puts a callused strumming finger on the very pulse of all that is wrong with Rufus's idiotic style of parenting. No wonder Daniel thinks he's acceptable in any way. Necktie adjusted, Daniel heads out woefully unprepared into the world: "It's just me, the best English department in America, and a hundred other highly competitive, extremely nervous wannabe Yalies."
And the uncompetitive, extremely un-nervous, extremely un-wannabe shoo-ins, of course. "Get excited, Archibald. We are three hours away from horny Women's Studies majors wanting to work out all their anger towards men in their bunk beds." Nate shakes his head at Chuck, wearing a totally cute argyle hoodie cardigan: "My heart's still set on USC. I just wish my mom wouldn't push Yale so hard. I think she's only pushing it because the Vanderbilt side of her family practically owns it." I guess with the Captain in Madeuplandia, Dartmouth's off the table. Charles is, by the way, wearing a perfect pink shirt and an ascot: "Think of it this way, Yale is your safety school." I want a t-shirt that says Yale Is My Safety School.
Nate continues to whine about the one thing he has to whine about, which is his family, but Chuck doesn't care one whit. "We blow off the formal visit crap and focus on what really matters -- creating your own Freshman Fifteen." Can you imagine being so very young that college freshman are worth fucking? Chuck explains, to Nate's intense delight, that he's only visiting Yale for his project of evaluating colleges based on their secret societies. "Yale has the crème de la crème: Skull & Bones. My goal is to get inside their inner sanctum." Nate asks how he plans on doing that. "By showing up," says Charles. Same as with you, duh.
The St. Jude's chancellor or whatever gives a short speech at the senior assembly about how their visits this weekend -- to Harvard, Yale and Brown -- are vastly important, as they are acting as the ambassadors of not only Constance Billard and St. Jude's, but their own families. Serena looks over at Blair, and her intensely huge smile falls flat. "We urge you to present yourselves in the best possible light," he continues, causing Dan, who couldn't do that if he tried, to hyperventilate. "I wonder what lucky school will be the subject of the nursery rhyme penned by Brooklyn's lamest fiction writer?" asks Chuck, and Dan says the Yale Dean of Admissions will probably appreciate his ability to write about "damaged characters" like the pathetically disguised Charlie Trout. So I guess that whole look of consideration and guilt from Dan last week went down the shitter. If he was just going to fuck Chuck over in the end, why throw the huge hissy with Noah Shapiro? Leprechauns have feelings too. "Looks like we'll be spending the weekend together. How nice. Say hello to the 'characters' on public transportation for me," Chuck snots, while Nate looks vacantly into space.
Serena runs to catch up with Blair, hands and eyes wide open, begging the past to stay in the past. When she pledged to be herself at all costs -- a pledge she broke an hour ago -- she didn't ever mean it to be hurtful. Plus, Blair has no idea she's already turned down an inordinate opportunity on her behalf. "So you're off to Yale?" B pronounces her deductive reasoning skills a perfect fit for "a place like Brown," declaring renewed hostilities without the hint of quarter and grossing Serena out anew. "An enclave of trustafarians and children of celebrities who major in drum circles and semiotics," B says brightly, "...Whatever that is." (I would explain, but basically it means you end up paying your rent by writing recaps of popular television shows.)
"I can't wait for you to come home Thanksgiving a militant veganista. Anemic and proud!" Serena, unable to deconstruct the underlying signifieds of these images to any great effect, reminds B that Brown is an Ivy League school. "Everyone knows that the only real Ivies are the Holy Trinity: Harvard, Yale and Princeton." S gets a little nastier, pointing out that not everybody wants to go to Yale because not everyone wants to be Blair Waldorf. "Not everyone can be." Nice.
"Since we're not friends anymore, let me speak frankly. You're not that smart." The sparks fly up immediately, because: what? "You lack focus and discipline. Charm is all well and good, but in the real world knowledge is power." Serena's face broadcasts clearly that it is now on, but of course B can't stop the horror train once she's boarded. "You wouldn't make it past the first round of admissions at Yale, no matter how hard you tried. Have fun in Providence." You may have the home-court advantage by virtue of being everybody's favorite person in the world, but we're about to head into my territory, and I desperately need you to understand that, because right now my entire sense of self is about going home and being the Queen B there. "Oh, and you know, maybe you can get your hair dreadlocked while you're there." Of course, Serena whips out her phone before GG can even start with the Oh Girl: "Gossip Girl's hardly a war buff, but I did cram for a quiz or two on the American Revolution. The last time New Haven was invaded was in 1779..." Serena tells Lily to change their itinerary: Operation New Haven is on. "Heads up, B. There's a cannonball coming your way!"
You will squeeze the life out of me
How did it come to this?
Jenny joins Rufus at breakfast wearing a disastrous dress that looks like Betsy Johnson fucked Laura Ingalls. "After that shower, there won't be any hot water left in the building," he says, but she admits she was just hiding from him until her backup arrived... as Vanessa walks into their house without so much as a knock on the door. "I got here as fast as I could!" she says breathlessly, because she literally has not one thing in her life that is not about nosing her way into the dazzling world of Humphriana. "...What's going on here?" Rufus asks uncertainly, and Little J reminds him that Vanessa is applying for NYU fall. (Thanks, if you'll remember, to Nate Archibald, who dissuaded her from her original plan of homelessness and dumpster-diving, but could not get her to enter an actual high school or become even slightly a better person before dumping her for being essentially exactly what she is.)
"Something you wouldn't be able to do without finishing high school," Rufus reminds them, and explains that homeschooling is the result of parental failure even by his sickening standards. "Living as an adult when you're a teenager is not something any parent wants for their child," he says, which Jenny again contradicts this by virtue of the fact that she is herself a person with a vested interest in her life. Rufus trumps her with the "you're underage" card, and Vanessa calls it "Plan B." The two lovely ladies sit down across the breakfast table and stare menacingly at him, and Jenny offers him the deal: Spend the day at the atelier watching her rock out, and then decide if child labor is right for her. If he still rules in favor of Constance, she'll go peaceably and fold her dreams up and stick them on the shelf, just like her father and Lily before her. "Jenny, I've seen all your designs. Heard about your internship all summer long. What more is there?" Um, everything? Eleanor is moving Jenny into being a commodity in such a sneaky way she doesn't even know she's doing it, and Jenny is becoming the new Kira Plastinina, and her Dad needs to understand that. He agrees, they toast on it with OJ, she gleams and squeals and ankle-dips herself into a coma even though it's obvious he'll be damned if this changes anything -- but at least it will shut her up.
Now, coming from an unorthodox background that is more like Jenny's than anybody else's, I am less interested in the freewheeling freakout cautionary tale that is obviously coming down the pike, because I think there are an infinite number of ways to become an adult and that generally the only person with any kind of authority over those choices -- the young person herself -- is also the only person lacking the common sense to make a good decision, and that's hilarious because it's universal, and it's how each and every one of us has arrived at the points at which we find ourselves today. We've all done the teenage hustling in one way or another, and I don't think it's worth pointing fingers or comparing scars on that note when you realize that you can't change one damn thing about your history except how much you love and respect it. I mean, I'm not going to tell you my shit, but it hits home in such a fundamental way that I don't really find much of interest talking about it now, because frankly at thirty I'm still hoeing rows I planted at her age, and happy to do so, not least because part of that is these little conversations we get to have, you and I.
So the interesting part of this story, to me, is actually how once you link up Serena's sudden outshining of Lily to Jenny's explicit superiority over Rufus -- and in both cases it's because of innate qualities, Serena's It-ness and Jenny's storied artistic talent -- you see a much stronger thematic consistency between the A and B stories here. Lily is drowning in her daughter just as Rufus is drowning in his, and then there's Blair, who's just drowning because she's a classic introspective, and her existence is always going to be contingent. And the whole point of literary moves like that is that you can cross-apply, and put Rufus's words in Blair's mouth, etc., giving yourself a much rounder perspective on each relationship and plot point, and that is brilliant.
The boys have a whole other gay thing happening, but as far as the main stories, you have to dig a little to see the parallels, but I am so glad they had Jenny declare herself more talented than Rufus outright and early on, because it makes his parental unease with all of this both creepier and easier to understand, and because I'm guessing Lily and Rufus are both going to put the kibosh on their kids in a future episode when they've both spiraled completely out of control, but this Running With Scissors question will remain in the air, which is where jealousy comes from and how hard it is to be both a parent and a fallible human being at the same time, especially in this science-fiction narrative universe where chumps like Dan get published in the New Yorker and Marc Jacobs names his purses after high school students. Because let's face it: don't all children operate at times on the worrisome suspicion that they're smarter or more talented than their parents? And don't parents secretly pick at that scab on occasion?
"We hear there's nothing like Yale in October. The crisp air, the turning leaves, the invasion of prospective freshmen... Better hurry up, Lonelyboy. Your future's waiting..." Dan sits in the Admissions office, giving Dean Berube intense douche chills as only a Humphrey can: "To summarize, I really feel that I have something to say..." Neither in this room nor with your work, Lonelyboy. The Dean encourages him, by all means, to say this thing, and Dan priggishly bottom-lines it for him: "...Via my writing. With its world-class English department, Yale would be the ideal place for me to grow as a writer, to flourish and, uh, thrive." The Dean, much as any of us witnessing this impressive douchiness, congratulates Humphrey on his "inner thesaurus," but points out that his application is missing several letters of recommendation. Of all the opportunities he's been squandering since the summer, the only patrician accolades he's managed to procure are those from long-ago hero JL Hall. "Noah Shapiro declined to write on your behalf," for example, having secreted his recommendation in his pot o' gold after what Dan calls their "creative differences," while Jay McInerney has refused comment on the summer internship that Dan, pigeon-like, shit all over.
"Oh, um, did you call him early in the morning? Because he's not... He's not a morning person. I mean, he's not an afternoon person either -- if you try, like, after seven..." Heh. Iggins explains that, given Dan's not-so-stellar performance in this room and his poor-ass DUMBO qualifications, he's going to need at least one other letter about his work. Dan gets pissy immediately, because he's applied for a MacArthur every six months since he was ten: "Another letter. From whom? ...And how?" Iggins urges him to look out the fucking window at all the brick buildings full of professors he should find there. "I suggest you put on your walking shoes..." And right then you know Dan's face is going to go impressively sour, because the only thing he hates more than putting on his walking shoes is accepting and loving people for who they are.
Charles and Nathaniel -- in rust-colored pants and a plum fedora -- revisit on the green. Nate is bored of sitting in the grass absent-mindedly playing with Chuck's hair and wants to go do something, but Chuck assures him that one does not "find" the Skull & Bones studs, they come find you. And then things get naughty. Nate's down with that, but notices totally boring things they could be doing, like attending a game of "football," whatever that is, or touring the art gallery... And then he spots Jordan Steele (YES! THAT IS HER NAME!) wandering uselessly behind a group of persons she probably refers to as her friends. She has kind of a ... Degrassi look to her. I don't know if that puts the image in your head that it puts in mine, but trust that it is perfectly descriptive.
Nate's dork-dar being no less impressively calibrated than poor old Asher Hornsby's, he immediately recognizes Jordan as the kind of low-self-esteem TA that would sleep with even the most obvious of homosexuals in the hopes of climbing higher in the social register. He takes off after her, wishing she had a hot dog he could knock out of her hands, and Chuck's like, "He'll come back." Of course, the second he's alone the Skull & Bones hotties play out an Alias-worthy snatch-and-grab, one reclining against the wall, insouciant as Jimmy Dean while another rough and tumble lad comes around the corner, knocks into Chuck just hard enough that he's caught off-guard, and then they put a bag over his head. Of course, he reacts in no way beyond a slight wobble for balance, because a) this is porn happening right in front of you and he likes porn and b) all he had to do was show up. I didn't want to go to college when I was in high school, because nobody was kind enough to explain that these kinds of things happen so regularly, but I assure you that the bag-over-the-head abductions are as constant and enjoyable a part of the collegiate experience as shaving cream fights in the quad, embarrassing sexual fumbles (and bunts), or overemotional, Foucault-referencing fights about the communal cooking space.
Blair watches Berube's secretary Shirley dust her impressive array of kitten statuettes and figurines, and listens to the uproarious laughter coming from the Dean's office. "Oh, my," Shirley says to herself in the most Old British Lady way. "The Dean hasn't laughed like that in years..." Eventually the house of mirth spills out into the anteroom, and of course it's the spell of Serena van der Woodsen the Dean has found himself all enraptured by. "It was an utter delight to meet you, Miss van der Woodsen! What a lovely surprise!" Serena gives him one of her patented aww moues and grins at Blair: "And who doesn't like a surprise?" he wishes her well and she giggles affably, shooting Blair a challenging smile. "Looks like he's ready for you," she says, and the Dean invites her in. Serena's look is like, "Poor beastly thing. The rain! In Spain!" even as Blair's shooting death rays. "I've never been more prepared," Blair stammers, and heads inside; Serena's eyebrows wish her luck as she passes by.
The secret of successful bullying is knowing that the best possible outcome is that the person will rise to the occasion. It's not pretty, but speaking as a vintage Mean Girl I can tell you there's always the hope that they'll break out of whatever lame shit they're stuck in, and prove you wrong. Resist this, anybody can tell you, is the true creed of the social assassin. We have only as much power as you give us. Serena's naturally sensitive to territories, it's part of her natural social intelligence; Blair did so much more than invite her in, like an unsuspecting vampire victim: she demanded Serena's presence, pushing just the right buttons to bring her on campus and accomplishing what even a handwritten invitation from one of the secret kings of the world could not. Everything else is just playing the role Blair's set out for her.
I wanted freedom
Bound and restricted
You'd never dream of breaking this fixation
Jordan explains the basic shit to Nate, somehow sensing that he needs information like, "whatever major you decide on, you can mix it up with electives." She touts the wonder of Yale's choices, and offers as her favorites "The Role Of Sex In Art," and "Great Hoaxes In Archaeology." Nate can't believe they're classes, even though obviously they are, and they laugh about the state of American higher education. We deny minorities and the poor their basic rights to a competitive education so that we can discuss this shit? That is awesome. And then you're telling me at the end of this, I get to contribute to my upper-middle-class family's legacy of accumulated wealth, thus ensuring an ever-widening gap between the legislative and political decision-makers and the peasant class whose poverty and agony sustain the very lifestyle to which I am accustomed? That is even funner! Between ivory tower academia and estate tax loopholes, our entire country will become even more a fiefdom in my lifetime! I am a witness to our racist history! There really are two Americas!
Nate tells Jordan he's from St. Jude's, and a dude overhears, desperate as any college student to instantly reel off everything he can think of tangentially related to his course load. "You must know Nate Archibald! I heard he's on campus this weekend. He's the son of Howard 'The Captain' Archibald, we've been talking about him in Econ. The guy's like a modern Milken!" Nate immediately tries to escape, but before Jordan gives him the campus tour, she wants to know his name. He immediately blurts the first name he can think of, which is "Dan Humphrey" for reasons we have only yet to understand, and they take off, hand in hand, for some chaste closed-mouth kissing and literary badinage.
Charles fixes his hair, surrounded by the taut abs and bulging deltoids of the Inner Sanctum. This is where shit blows up and things start getting gay with a vengeance. All that gender performance, "watch me fuck this girl" stuff that you do in high school? College is like the AP class version of that. Which frankly is why all the rape. "Chuck Bass. Heir to Bass Industries, champion of the legendary Lost Weekend. Rumor has it you've slept with more Maxim covers than John Mayer." And better, Chuck adds to much approving laughter, but I don't believe it. Little Big Head says my body's a Wonderland, I'm gonna take it at face value. "If our intel's correct, you're our prime candidate from year's class. But we don't take anything on hearsay, we need to know firsthand if you're as good as your advertising." Chuck stands and tells them in no uncertain terms that yes, he can take a dick like a champ. "Well, I come prepared. How about a little private party to kick things off?" They pretend to wonder what he means, and Chuck gives that smile that says the line forms to the left.
"I have to say, your application is most impressive, Miss Waldorf. There's just one thing I'd like to know. Tell me something about you that isn't in that packet." B stares at him, because what? "Do you like to drive race cars? Can you cook authentic Szechuan? The young lady before you told me a delightful story -- she was recently in a fashion show! Just for fun!" B is sickened, of course, because explaining how that happened, and how she dragged Serena kicking and screaming into victory once again, is too long and sad a story to recapitulate. Once again, she defines herself only in opposition to Serena, who couldn't be less like her and thus perfectly opposes her at every turn. "I know I must seem rather traditional compared to that young lady, but isn't tradition what Yale is all about?" Dean Berube explains the secret key to this conversation, that Yale is trying to change its egghead/upper-crust image to more of a party school one -- which will never happen, but he's welcome to try and make a deli platter out of quiche Lorraine -- and looks at her expectantly.
The music in this episode is brilliant in at least three places, of course, but this is one of them. The following speech, her cadence and intonation, give every indication of an imminent bursting into song that never quite occurs. There's even like a hint of the ghost of a memory of a Cockney lilt lurking in the basement of her phrasing here, which -- no shit -- verges on iambic. Leighton Meester's instincts are, as ever, infallible; Blair's are, as ever, tone-deaf.
"I'm aware I lack some people's easy grace
With strangers. And I don't exactly make
You feel like you've known me forever
Even though we've just met. When I laugh,
You might not smile just at the
Coquettish sound of it. And I
May not be "spontaneous" or
"Delightful" or "full of surprises," and
My hair might not sparkle when it catches
The light..."
Realizing her voice has been getting more and more crazy and aggressive throughout that little trip through verse-ville, Blair shudders. "...Everything worth knowing about me is in that folder," she says sadly. "I made sure of it." Which is exactly why she needs Serena, even when she feels water-boarded by it: because Serena knows all the things outside that folder, and wants more than anything to make Blair understand them.
Outside, Blair and the Dean shake hands, equally disappointed, and Blair tries several times for an invite to the night's secret reception, but he's not bending. And then, in one of the most indelible images from the novels, Blair awkwardly swoops in on him and pecks him on the cheek, just entirely out of her mind and reaching for an appropriate behavior that is not there. He jumps out of his skin, Shirley's eyes bug out, and Blair immediately worries that she's going to throw up. The Dean retreats to his office immediately, and Blair quietly prays for death.
Outside Admissions, Serena's cracking up about "Great Hoaxes In Archaeology" with some lovely friends she's only just met, drawing her in to show her the course catalog through sheer force of delightfulness. Her hair sparkles blindingly as Blair rushes her, scattering the underclassmen back to their garrets and hidey-holes. "What are you doing, Serena?" S plays it off, of course, so Blair has to say it out loud. "No, here. Yale. Yale is mine!" Serena admits she was only visiting to punish B for her outright bitchitude that morning, and B's like, "Consider me fucking punished," but Serena stops her in her tracks: "...I actually like it here." It bounces thuddingly against the back of Blair's head like a thrown handbag, and she whirls back around, stricken.
"The campus is beautiful, the people are so nice... And do you know how great the drama school is?" B screeches crazily, "-- Of course I do! It's world-renowned!" S presses, a little meanly: "The Dean made me realize that by being so set on Brown, I closed myself off to all other options." The Dean, she's saying, made her realize that being so set on keeping Blair safe from the world that she closed herself off from possibilities. Again. "Well, that's a lovely epiphany. I'm afraid it's irrelevant. It's not as if you'd actually get in here..." Serena's phone rings, and she answers brightly, framing her responses as a tommy gun pointed right at Blair's little head. "An intimate gathering at the Dean's house tonight? I'd be honored. Thank you." Blair gets pissy about another thing stolen, and Serena looks down at her from a height of ten feet at least: "You might want to make other plans. She said I was her last call." Until you stop calling me stupid, I am going to make the point that I am not stupid; until you stop telling me I don't deserve what I have, Daniel Humphrey, I am going to drink deep. Define yourself against me all you want, but don't insult me in the process: Cansei de Ser Stupid. Serena turns and plays with her phone so that B can process, but Blair pulls her best trick out, finally: absolute raw-assed vulnerability at weird times, which always works.
"Of all the things -- Nate, my mom, the girls at school -- you wouldn't take this from me." Serena doesn't turn, but the tears spring up in her eyes, the mirror to Blair's own. She rises a step toward her and makes her usual mistake: "Because if you do, I swear I will take you down." Brute force is all she has, but until she understands that's the one thing that won't work on Serena, all she's going to do is force Serena to fight back. Any other sentence, literally, in the English language would have done it: Serena would have turned around crying and apologizing for shit from two years ago, but B picked the one thing nobody in their right mind would back down from, least of all Serena who has still done absolutely nothing wrong in this scenario except waffle on the "hide your light" issue.
"I'm not taking anything from you, Blair. I was invited. And as for taking me down? I'd love to see you try." B runs off to find her Serena voodoo doll, and GG fairly cackles. "When it comes to war, the rule is never retreat, never surrender. S sad face, ready for the challenge. But whoever said that never met the new Serena..."
You're something beautiful
A contradiction
I wanna play the game
You will be the death of me
House of Waldorf, Little J doing things with fabric while Rufus wanders around dressed as a fucking farmer at the Pearl Jam farm. GG, so bored by Humphreys that she's not even trying, blows it off with a nonsensical "Spotted: Little Jenny Humphrey, off her high horse and in high demand." I dare you to parse that shit and explain what it means. Of everybody on this entire show the only person who has made a concerted -- impressively so, in fact -- effort to stay high-horse free is Jenny Humphrey. It's one of the things that makes her less abject and pretty wonderful this year. I never thought Jenny would be in the first tier of beloved characters on this show, but there you go. Luckily, Vanessa is so intrinsically awful that nothing short of saving Eric from a tentacled sewer monster will ever make me reverse my position on her. (Except for that time she bent over backwards to save my Nate from a tentacled sewer monster fucking its own child, but we all knew that was provisional until such time as she turned back into an asshole.)
That atelier girl I like so much drags Little J off to veto some samples, and Rufus follows the beleaguered Eleanor into her office to whine at her. "I didn't realize it was Bring Your Father To Work day," she laughs, and he explains the totally uninteresting backstory about how it's a demonstration of how important this work is to Jenny's heart and soul, finally begging Eleanor to stop texting long enough to have a parent-slaveholder conversation about where this is heading. "What can I do for you?" Eleanor sighs, hoping to get his plaid ass out of her hair, and he says, promo-ready, "...Fire her." Eleanor laughs her ass off, perfectly: "I will do no such thing! Fashion is a young person's career, and this is Jenny's moment." Rufus complains that this is an opportunity that can wait until "she" is ready. "Do you remember the dreams you had when you were fifteen, Mr. Humphrey? What if they all started to come true? Would you have told them to wait?" He makes a thinky face. Good deal. Now only five more people need to say that verbatim to him before he actually hears it.
Charles finishes up his arrangements for whatever deranged debauchery he's planning for the Skull & Bones babes, and calls out to the briskly walking Serena, fresh from her latest provocation. "I know you're not a Geography whiz, but ... You are aware that Providence is in Rhode Island?" Serena's like, No time for you. I don't mind the repeated meme this week of Serena's horrible grades and general disinterest in scholastics, because she knows that -- as we all eventually find out, and frankly Rufus/Jenny is telling this same, pretty subversive truth that teenagers must never know -- that given the option, Serena's skills and abilities are much more important and useful than any amount of Blair insanity and intellectual superiority, because once you graduate high school -- as the Dean will demonstrate numerous times, in line with your own experiences post-high school -- none of that shit matters. Being cool, navigating the sharks, charisma, who you know, what you actually do with your elemental building blocks: all of these things matter so much more than the capital of Rhode Island that it's pretty disgusting, but those who learn it early (or, even better, manage to absorb and synthesize both kinds of information) start out miles ahead of the people who honestly thought GPA matters.
But Serena's gotta not only change but also come up, apparently, with an answer to "the Dean's question" which she, as yours truly, knows can only be YES. But no, the Dean's question, in this particular case, is a bit more specific than that: "What person, real or imagined, living or dead, would you most like to have dinner with?" Duh, Eric Harris. Not that I could defend that at a classy luncheon or reception, but there it is, all coughed up on the table. Serena blergs about how she really should have given her spot to Blair, who is not only capable of giving a fuck but actually insistent on it, but Chuck's too into the gradual destruction of Blair's entire life to worry about that -- and too delighted by the drama that might result. "You got invited and she didn't? You're lucky to be alive!"
"Well, I won't be much longer if I don't find an answer fast." OMG remember high school when the questions had answers? Even a question about the kind of person you are and what your interests and priorities are, even that question has right and wrong answers. I miss that certainty. Chuck tells her to just steal Blair's, since she won't be using it, but Serena is horrified and doesn't want to hear -- so of course he blurts it out. "George Sand." Serena berates him for telling her, then wonders why he knows, and then wonders why Blair would choose "some guy named George." Chuck explains how she was actually a hot girl, which is actually a total lie. She looked like Jordan Steele, and acted like one of those with the bumper stickers that say shit like, "Well-Behaved Woman Rarely End Up Bitter & Lonely Weirdos Like Me" or whatever, and I mean, if you're into socially abnormal ugly chicks, then hell yeah, I'll have those bluestockings off with my teeth, but I've seen Chuck's type, and... Actually if you squint, George Sand kind of does look a little like Nate Archibald. Nevermind. Anyway, she's Berube's favorite writer, and the reason he knows this is, of course, because talking about Yale gets her horny. Serena flees, because now she knows two things she didn't want to know, and one of them will "haunt her" forever.
Jordan and Nate are "making out" Jonas Brothers-style to some, like, Mazzy Star when she abruptly stops kissing him for a quick conversation about Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. I wish that weren't so realistic. Nate stammers and she narrows the field, chuckling, to just Cholera, which he quickly describes as painful. Not just the disease, which is characterized by diarrhea, vomiting and leg cramps, but also the experience of reading the book. She is charmed by his unassuming humor, so unlike most freshman writers, and then the most freshman writer writer of all time knocks on the door. The experience of Dan Humphrey is, coincidentally, also characterized by intestinal distress and sudden cramping.
Dan is visiting Jordan because she's an English TA who works for the Chair of the Lit department, and he hopes she'll do his leg work by getting a professor to read his work and provide a reference. He interrupts himself to note Nate sitting on her bed, waving desperately for Dan not to reveal his identity, and there's a moment of confusion before Dan blithely gets Jordan to understand that the real live Dan Humphrey is standing in front of her, while the fake Dan Humphrey is actually the Captain's son.
Coming out of the dorms at a hasty speed, Nate is furious at being cockblocked, but Dan's more interested in being snotty: When Nate complains that she went from being on his jock to throwing a book at his head, Dan's only response is, "Yeah, Faulkner. It looked like a first edition, not that you'd know." What a horrible fucking boy. Nate can't understand why Dan was so intent on screwing up his Freshman First, but Dan's more concerned with Nate's preference for screwing up his "last chance at making a connection in the Lit department" for "pseudonymous sex." Nicely done. He's all about how his future is not a joke, but he just keeps bitching even as Nate tries to explain about the Captain: "Look Nate, I'm sure that your life is complicated, with your family and, um, I don't know, girls, but you can't pretend to be me." Nate takes off, because he's boring, but of course Dan has to go to the poverty place immediately. "Maybe it's okay to use people like that in your world, but it's not in mine." UGH! Yeah, the whole Upper East Side exists only to torment you. "Do you ever get tired of carrying around that chip on your shoulder, Dan? No wonder Serena dumped you." And no matter how cute Dan looks in his brown suit, that is awesome.
Blair surprises Secretary Shirley with a scary face and force of will. "I would like an invitation to the private reception at the Dean's house tonight, and you're going to get me one." Shirley apologizes, citing her distance from the Dean's private affairs, but B's not having it. "Interviews are so stressful for you students..." Shirley equivocates, but Blair tells her to check her email: there's an auction listing of some kind of random kitty figurines. "Eighteenth century. Do you know how rare a pair is from that era? I had someone at Christie's put them on hold, just in case." Shirley immediately hands over the address and they lock eyes, conspiratorial and creepy. "Poor S. She should know B's rules by now: when someone leaves you off the list, don't get mad! Get in." Blair thanks her, and leaves with the info.
I won't let you bury it/ I won't let you smother it/ I won't let you murder it
Our time is running out
At the atelier, Rufus admits he's impressed, both by the general respect she's earned and her own very professional behavior, but Little J's not even mid-ankle dip when he rules in favor of Constance Billard. She stutters sadly for a second before giving in, and with a broken spirit and poor posture, asks her father to take her on one last errand before her dreams go down for their final dirt nap.
A string quartet version of my favorite Muse song, "Our Time Is Running Out," is playing at the Dean's party. As you know, this show has the best music, but it's also usually employed quite wisely and sort of amazingly apropos in general. In this case, the various lyrics quoted above aren't there, because you can't have that shit playing at this party, but you have to have it playing at the party because of all the wonderful songs on this show, the one most central to each episode always plays during the big party. It's always the case. So it's a neat little heightened reality moment to have a string version of the central song playing, because it's still unrealistic but also really haunting.
Serena stands over a large bowl full of slips of paper, thinking about her answer. Blair jumps out at her to scream BOO and Serena's amazed she managed to manipulate her way in. Blair is wearing a black dress with a shiny lavender ribbon headband, and looks totally gorgeous: "I get what I want, Serena. Just like I'm gonna win tonight. What's your answer? Oh, no, let me guess. Lauren Conrad?" (Coincidentally, I thought about saying that as my answer, because I sort of want to be her when I grow up. Talk about a real-life Serena van der Woodsen.) Serena, again taunted by Blair's aggressive insecurity into defending herself, straight up says she's using George Sand. "If you're gonna cheat your way in, then why should I play fair? Oh, and I heard that the Dean asks his question in alphabetical order, so since V comes before W, it looks like the answer is all mine."
The song goes wild, perhaps in part to keep you from noticing that the answers are going into a bowl. Which means the Dean is somehow going to simultaneously be producing them at random, and in alphabetical order. Which may be impossible, but then I'm not a Dean of Yale. Also, Serena is wearing less an outfit than a sports bra, and generally looks dressed even more insanely than she was at the interview, and when she heads over to talk to the Dean -- leaving Blair alone and looking schemey at the punch bowl of answers -- she says, "How kind of you!" in the weirdest, most loopy ADR loop of all time. It sounds like she's doing Eliza Doolittle again. Maybe it's just in Blair's imagination.
Chuck introduces the men of Skull & Bones to their entertainment: triplet sets of whores from an undisclosed European nation, wearing blindfolds to I guess give things a more Fidelio ambience. They climb all over the dudes, and they pretend to be turned on for about five seconds before demanding the cherubic ass of Nate Archibald instead/in addition to. "The girls are all right, but they're just girls. You still need to prove your loyalty." End quote. Chucks swears Nate's not worth their time, but they all start whining the litany of how bad Jimmy Coo... I mean, the Captain, injured their money things. (One of them actually refers to Newport realty, in fact, so it's not even technically a gratuitous link.) "Pull him in. Take him down. You've got one hour." Chuck grins evilly, and it's a credit to this show that I actually thought he would do it for a second.
Serena and some intensely French, faceless lady discuss the films of Lelouch -- Serena's favorite is Roman de Gare even though she's a total Attention bandit!), but when she asks Mme. Frenchy's favorite in turn, she calls her "toi," which is B's cue to sliiiide on up. "Actually it's vous, as a sign of respect. I'm sure that's why you don't know it very well." Except the whole formal/familiar thing is the kind of etiquette where it makes it worse when you point it out, but whatever. Serena tosses back her drink. Blair sticks her hand out and plays the legacy card: Mme. Frenchy was Harold's favorite teacher, and in fact inspired his expatriation to France. Serena rolls her eyes as Blair offers to tell her all about it, and whisks her away. Serena is just like, Lord.
Chuck tells Nate he's been "tied up," but Nate has no time for wordplay because he wants out of New Haven immediately. Chuck admits that he doesn't care to hear the reasons right now, but offers to "get blazed" with him somewhere. Nate heads over to "Mike's Bar," apparently, and Chuck smiles at the fellows. "It's done."
Blair's being completely weird, comparing Henry VIII to Sir Thomas More and discussing his canonization. Serena appears and fully puts some trash in Blair's outstretched hand, then corrects her on the Pope who did the deed. "Most people don't know their popes in succession," the professor marvels, and then abruptly walks out of the scene. Blair takes Serena to task for knowing historical things even though she is no kind of student, and Serena points out the thing I am always striving to point out, which is that the quality of our entertainment is entirely contingent on the viewer, and you can even learn from crap like The Tudors if you remember to think while you're watching TV. Plus, you know, "Henry Cavill is a total babe." She needles Blair about having to come up with a new answer for the Dean's question, and Blair promises she's got something planned that will be a real crowd-pleaser: "It's gonna kill." Girl, what did you do?
The Dean clinks his glass and makes a dorky joke about how the Q&A part of the night has come to be called "Probatur." B snottily informs Serena that it's Latin for "the quiz," and Dean Berube begins. Elsewhere, the total hotties of Skull & Bones kidnap the squealing mess that is Dan Humphrey, while Chuck watches with an evil gleam in his eye. Back at the party, the Dean calls on Miss Steinberg, whose answer is Artemis, which is Latin for loser Women's Studies major who cries in the shower.
As Steinberg goes on and on about Artemis, Serena is overjoyed to find out that Brown is not the only place this vermin finds its home, while Blair is just completely disgusted on every level. Not only does Steinberg exist, but she's here at Yale, which proves her wrong about whose territory it is, because a truly Blairized place would be Steinberg-free. Steinberg even refers to herself as a Freegan, which, imagine the worst person you've ever met in your entire life, dunk them in a filthy river, and convince them that housing is a right and employment is offensive. Ever notice how the most evangelical weirdos always seem to claim as necessary societal reforms the bullshit they were going to do anyway? That's like me telling you alcoholism is now a religion.
As Steinberg finishes up with her impassioned wish to "screw the man" at the same time she's being of no use or worth to anyone including herself, Serena gloats about the whole mysterious alphabetical thing, and B promises her that the look on her face will be one purely of vindication. "Now, on to Miss van der Woodsen. The person you would most like to have dinner with, real or imagined, living or dead is... Pete Fairman." Serena's heart breaks, while Blair makes entirely inappropriate but very funny whaaa? faces. "I do not know this person. Who is Pete Fairman?" Serena stammers just long enough for Blair to jump in: "He's the man she killed."
You can't push it underground
You can't stop it screaming out
Everybody stares while Serena feels maybe more horrible than you've ever felt. I mean, I know she didn't really kill the guy, but watching a man literally expire in front of you is traumatic no matter who you are. She's allowed to be fucked up just by seeing it, at fifteen years of age. Blair whispers that this is what she deserves, and Serena tries to explain that Pete Fairman was a man she knew ("Man-slash-dealer," Blair helpfully notes, to the point where the Dean has to tell her to shut up) who died in front of her, and the tragedy and regret of it haunt her, although she wasn't responsible. "Were you responsible for the sex tape?" Blair asks, and Serena has had enough. "Wasn't very sexy, if you ask me," Blair says, before Serena finally grabs her elbow and drags her outside to stop acting like a vapid lunatic child. "My answer was George Sand," Blair shrieks as she's being dragged away. "Love her! Idolize! Worship!"
Out on the porch, B asks if Serena's trying to kill her two, but Serena is way over it. Like, she's more done than we've ever seen her. "A guy died, and you use it as part of a game? Who does that?" Blair tries to explain that this isn't a game, this is her drowning and feeling like she has nowhere to stand, and that specifically Yale is specifically her one dream. She feels like S crossed the line by showing up, which may be true but she sure did force it to happen, and frankly Serena wins there too: "And so did you when you brought up Pete!" That is by far the angriest we've ever seen her, it's pretty amazing to see how much Blake's been holding back all along because of how Serena works. "As far as my being here, you take that up with the school."
She turns her back on Blair and heads back inside, but: there it is. Blair's only recourse when she's caged up is to do the most horrific, destructive thing she can think of. All of her insecurities and fears about getting into Yale have a face, now, and what Serena's saying is that it isn't up to either of them what happens. She can't say that Serena's taking it away from her if Serena is essentially powerless in this situation, then she's standing or falling on her own merits, not having anything taken away from her. And, confronted with the facts, she can't think of anything else to do. There's no angle she can play there, if it's true. But instead of accepting that, she pulls a total Blair, which is to say: when Blair doesn't know what to do, she really doesn't know what to do. Which is how Serena ends up getting a purse lobbed at the back of her head. Even the music is scared to start playing.
Serena turns back around, like, Really? "You did not just do that." And Blair does that face she does that's like, Yeah, I kind of can't believe I just did that either, and I scare myself, but suck it anyway. She explains the very simple, kinda awful truth that Serena's not Yale material, and that she was only invited because of her face splattered across Page Six. It makes Serena sad, because of course she's thought about that already. "Face it, Serena. Yale needs to up their Q rating, just like all the other schools, and they're gonna use girls like you to do it." Serena shoves her a little, Blair shoves back, and then boom: total hilarious intense hair-tossing catfight. Serena yells, "And I really hate those stupid headbands!" and a second later Blair screeches, "AHH! My HEADBAND!" and Serena bashes her over the head with the purse over and over, and at some point I swear B goes, "I'm gonna eff you up!" That. Was amazing.
Lily tries on Serena's black dress, with her gorgeous body, and looks like a weird 80s superhero. It's all angles and shoulders and décolletage. Downstairs, Jenny runs her last errand with Rufus in tow: dropping off something to go with the dresses they delivered. Rufus figures out where they are and says Jenny's name in a warning tone, but it's too late: there's Lily, looking smokin' in a dress about three years too young, and Rufus's mouth watering so bad he can't even talk. Jenny offers to leave them alone long enough to find some matching shoes, and they make awkward talk because she doesn't want to admit how lonely she is again, but trying to explain her day of playing dressup will make it seem worse, and Serena and Charles are at Yale and Eric has a new boyfriend, so... Rufus compliments her on the dress for like the sixth time, and Lily lights up with joy: "Of course it is! Your daughter made it! You're so lucky to have a daughter that's this good at what she wants to do so early in her life. It's a gift. You had one, too, if I remember correctly..." And I guess Lily saying it means five times as much as the other hundred people who have said this, because you can totally see him change his mind. Jenny comes back down with some Choos and Rufus slobbers all over Lily some more, and when he's gone she smiles so, so hard. Aww.
Nate's at Mike's Bar, getting plastered. Oh! The end of this video made me laugh, I wanted to show you that. Anyway, he's drunk-dialing Charles for the billionth time when the Skull & Boners come in laughing about how they tied "Nate Archibald" to a statue in a gazebo, and Nate drunkenly tries to start shit with them, remembers after five seconds that he's kind of a huge girl, and runs off into the night. Meanwhile, Dan's totally sick body is exposed to the elements, because of course they stripped him ... to his clamdigger-length boxers. Give me a break. Or at least a little of that NYPD Blue action, you know you're going to eventually. (Although to be honest, thanks to True Blood I'm getting about fifty times my weekly recommended allowance of random dude's asses as it is. That is the nakedest show ever.) Anyway, nobody will help Dan or untie him, and Nate tries to untie him and they realize that Chuck set him up, and Dan is ungrateful and rude in about six different ways, and then Jordan randomly walks up and goes, "Step aside, my mom was in the Navy." Which means that... she can untie knots. What? Then what happens is, I believe, a MMF threesome in a college dormitory, but I am still looking for proof.
Blair gathers her things from the porch while Serena rests on a bench nearby, and declares herself exhausted by all the fighting. "That's because you almost lost. I had you pinned with that chicken wing, don't deny it." Man, I did not understand that line even though I listened to it over and over, but let me tell you that after an hour of watching amateur wrestling demonstrations of the double chicken wing on YouTube, I wish we'd seen it. "I don't mean this, I mean ... everything. The wars, the betrayal, watching out for every possible land mine... It's exhausting!" Blair agrees. "I'm sick of always looking like Darth Vader to Sunshine Barbie. Life's too short. You make it feel so long." That is beautiful, and the way she says it is beautiful, but I'm not entirely sure I get what she means. She has me pinned with the chicken wing of my heart.
Serena almost starts crying thinking about what if they just break up, no harm no foul, and Blair turns around so that she can agree without also crying, and they both separately wish and pray fervently for the other one to recant, but they don't, and finally Serena leaves, and Blair can't believe she really walked off, and then she just kind of stares into space, totally lost. "From comrades to combat, we thought we'd seen it all, but we've never seen this: Serena and Blair, calling a cease-fire. After so much scorched earth, can either side claim victory?"
Little Jenny wears some hotpants to breakfast the day, and of course Vanessa is there. I dunno, maybe she really is fucking Rufus. It's not like she has any concept of boundaries, and he's sort of eternally fifteen in that Juno way, so it wouldn't even be creepy so much as pathetic business as usual. Rufus delivers yet another speech to the dubious Jenny: "When I was your age, all I wanted was to be a musician. But my parents didn't think it was a good idea, and it made for some pretty uncomfortable years. And last night, I realized that... That we don't have to do things that way." We can do it the way where I give you whatever you want, because I'm so desperate to be liked that I will even work to get attention from Dan Humphrey, Brooklyn's answer to a question no one asked.
So Vanessa's going to set Jenny up with homeschooling, just as I predicted, and after Christmas they'll talk about applying to the Professional Children's School. "Like Vera Wang!" screams Little J. "AIEEEE!" (Also: Adam Arkin, Carrie Fisher, all-time superhottie and Penn Badgley impersonatee Elliot Gould, Amy Irving, Carol Kane; Gelsey Kirkland, Sandra Dee, Yo-Yo Ma; Christina Ricci, Christian Slater, Melissa Joan Hart, Rebecca Gayhardt, Ricki Lake, Tara Reid, Sarah Jessica Parker, the Culkins, Jena Malone, Julia Stiles, Martha Plimpton, Scarlett Johansson, Uma Thurman, Sara Rue, and of course my favorite human, Sarah Michelle Gellar -- who went through something close to what Jenny experienced at Constance, and for all I know got to see firsthand all the bullshit Jenny's going to encounter in the weeks to come. Proving that he is still borderline retarded, when Jenny promises she won't let him down, he's all, "I know you won't." But she totally will! She will finally break the seal on her barely contained buttcrazy off-the-chain insanity! It will be wildly awesome and cause all parents to shit simultaneously! Mini Cooper, get your ass here already!
B meets S coming out of the Admissions building, and it turns out they're both taking anticredit for the scene last night so that the other one can still have a chance. Blair is wearing an impressive mishmash of collegiate styles all weekend, but I have to say the flapper bucket hat, while not attractive or flattering in any way, is certainly the cleverest of her sartorial attempts to prove her Yalitude. They talk about the time Blair tackled Senator Schumer's daughter for wearing a Harvard sweatshirt to the Harvard/Yale game, proving once again that crazy is born, not taught. Blair freaks out about the concept of not knowing or being with Serena, and they are totally in love, and Serena offers the total freaky lie that girls of this age cling to, which is that they fought because they didn't want to be separated, and OMG they are so sweet.
The morning after the TOTAL THREESOME, and Dan's drinking coffee. Nate asks Jordan once again to help Dan with the recommendation, and of course she's going to because she just had a night of passion with two of the hottest guys of all time, and Jordan kisses Nate and tells him some bullshit thing about being himself, because he's so interesting and smart and funny and all the things you tell yourself about your boyfriend when your boyfriend is like Nate. "You know what? You do Dan Humphrey better than Dan Humphrey," Dan says, and really actually laughs, like Penn Badgely laughs, at the funny face Nate makes. "That thousand yard squint, can I steal that?" Chuck is going to unspool.
The Skull & Boners are all over Chuck for sending them after the wrong Nate Archibald, but before they can issue some futile threats in his direction he tells them that the triplet whores from last night were totally wearing lipstick cameras and now he owns them forever and through them, of course, all of America for the hundred years. Lipstick! Cameras! It's been nearly a week and I still can't get over that!
Nate sulks by the towncar while the driver loads his eighteen bags full of beauty products and shoes, and Chuck's like, "Missed you last night," and Nate's all, "Oh did you? Or maybe you just didn't want me around," and Chuck's like, "No baby it ain't like that, I love you," and Nate's all, "I can't believe you sicced the Skull & Boners on my new BFF" and Chuck is like, "Fuck a bunch of BFF, that's Dan Humphrey. His continued existence is an affront," and also calls him "Humdrum Humphrey," which: really? Nate totally defies Chuck's scary intense insistence that Dan is "less than nothing" and it's like watching Tippi Hedren leave her husband in a movie: he's wearing like a smoking jacket and smoking a pipe or a sportcoat with those elbow protector things and he's like, "We'll talk about this in the car, dear," and she's all, "I'd rather take the train.... With Dan Humphrey. At least he cares about my feelings!" And then runs away so you can't see her mascara running. Man, if you went back it would be scary easy to turn every single Nate/Chuck scene into a particularly dramatic episode of Mary Worth.
Blair and Serena joke about how weird the Dean is, and then stare wistfully at "Yale," in its secret Columbia shapeshifter form, because when this show doesn't feel like trying it is not even going to pretend to try, and the Dean of course calls and makes it clear that they're both right: Blair's still in the stack of applications and will remain there until she's driven herself fully crazy, and Serena's going to get early acceptance for being a Page Six girl, and he's already writing up the press release about her visit to the school. So now they both feel totally fucked, but at least they have each other. Blair tries to explain to Serena that she can neither give up nor share her good fortune with B this time, and needs to just suck it up, but Serena's not convinced she won't at some later date be able to wrinkle her nose or laugh coquettishly and get the entire cast through Admissions. Even Vanessa. And when they hug, Serena's just deliriously happy to be back with Blair, but Blair still looks like Elijah Wood about four hours into The Return Of The King, which is to say I think she has cholera.
"Dreams. Everybody has them. Some good, some bad..." -- Serena pulls that stupid hat down over Blair's head and kisses her -- "...Some you wish you could forget..." -- Lily puts away the sexy weird black dress -- "...Sometimes you realize you've outgrown them... " -- Little J reports for sweatshop duty and is awesome -- "...Sometimes you feel like they're finally coming true..." -- Chuck watches Dan and Nate giggling down the street together, for all intents and purposes holding hands and buying each other tulips and scarves and shit -- "... And some of us just have nightmares. But no matter what you dream, when morning comes, reality intrudes, and the dream begins to slip away." Blair stares back at Yale and confronts the idea that shit happens. It has honestly never occurred to her before, and it's sad to watch that die. "Dream a little dream of me!"
week: B remembers that V is the worst thing in the world, assumes her Merteuil persona, and sends Chuck on a new mission, promising delights to come: "Seduce & Destroy." Totally the new title of my autobiography, GG. Thanks for the tip. XOXO.
Gossip Girl is, like, so unrealistic! Let us count the ways with our Gossip Girl: Non-New York State of Mind gallery.